Author: Zouxzoux

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Baby Steps

Zouxzoux

We placed the brick pavers one by one, red the color of old blood, in between discussions of surgical drainage, catscans and ventilators. Six one day, four the next, none for a week when the fever rose and the blood pressure dropped and the white blood count was more than twice the normal value. I watch as the path grows and think a lot about the color of the pavers like the color of her heart, the toughness of the brick like the toughness of her character and the slow progression that mimics her daily life in ICU. The garden … Continue reading Baby Steps

New Orleans21 Comments

An Aerial View

Zouxzoux

I never said forever. That’s a time continuum I can’t comprehend in a world too tightly bound by years. Today is my commorancy, my roots are in this moment and each one that follows, as it exists. The long tunnel into the future is too narrow, I will not be stuck there. Take my hand, look into my eyes and feel the fresh air on our skin. Now. _____________________________________ Shared with dVerse Poets Pub. Continue reading An Aerial View

New Orleans8 Comments

Stitching the Pieces

Zouxzoux

Your eyes only saw the best part of me, perfectly groomed in classic black and heels, ambivalence hidden behind serenity’s repose. I kept dishevelment ensconced in private rooms where uncombed hair fell in tangled lanks and mismatched Pj’s enclosed goose-pimpled flesh from the draft of honesty. Your ears only heard whispers and murmurs and sonorous sounds of yearning, never impatient recriminations in careless moments of the familiar or irrational shrieks of a bad temperament. The trick was the delicate convergence of the frenetic and the steadfast and how to locate the balance. ______________________________________________- Written with thanks to Three Word Wednesday … Continue reading Stitching the Pieces

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My Poem on Mad Swirl!

Zouxzoux

My poem, “Dark/Light”, was published on the literary ezine Mad Swirl on Monday, April 9. This is my second publication there and I’m hoping for a third in the future in order to earn my own Poet’s Page. Wish me luck! Mad Swirl is a great ezine featuring the work of “poets, illustrators, writers, photographers, painters and psychos (preferably harmless ones)”. It’s a great creative resource and I highly recommend it. Continue reading My Poem on Mad Swirl!

New Orleans24 Comments

Short Waves

Zouxzoux

Words traveled on the breeze on moonlit nights, moonless nights, rainy nights, humid nights, freezing nights, floating over houses where husbands and wives bickered, over bars where voyeurs eyeballed each other while drinking their courage, over city streets slipping under the feet of the maligned miscreant running from shadow to shadow. Words spoken in the flickering light of the TV through a filter of whiskey, under the sheets of a missing person sleeping in a car in a hospital parking lot. Words heard in an empty room smelling of paint and cigarettes and desperation while children do homework and eat … Continue reading Short Waves

New Orleans19 Comments

The Hordes

Zouxzoux

I’m tired of the knee-jerk uneducated and uniformed opinions splattered all over social media and the resulting mindless group exercise of the modern day witch hunt. Half-baked news spreads like typhoid infested waters with the pressing of Android thumbs and everybody’s an expert. And everybody’s opinion is as self-righteously correct as the texter’s before them and the millions to follow. We will show our solidarity, dammit, and you will know our view is right and true by the signs we hold up on the screens of YouTube or FaceBook or even on the network evening news because the media wouldn’t … Continue reading The Hordes

New Orleans6 Comments

Repetition Interrupted

Zouxzoux

It makes me anxious, reading your words. I’ve done my years of anxious, of constantly running three steps ahead of a fit. I threw that shit away in 2009 after my good altruistic intentions got slammed by a sledgehammer of entrenched mediocrity. And that was just in my work life. Friends come and go and I became caught up in a frenzy of mindless socializing, of running from event to event not of my choosing, hitting the streets in a dervish dance from bar to parade to fest to second line and guzzling the latest cocktail de jour or micro … Continue reading Repetition Interrupted